fruit · The Trophy Room
Cotton Candy Fruit
The fruit that actually earns its silly name — bite one of these tiny red berries and it genuinely tastes like spun cotton candy. The Jamaican cherry is a fast, weedy pioneer tree that fruits almost constantly, dropping sweet little candies free for anyone walking past.
Identifying
- small round red berries, pea-to-marble sized, on a spreading roadside tree
- soft, full of fine seeds, with a distinct cotton-candy / caramel sweetness
- alternate leaves that are lopsided at the base, sticky-fuzzy to the touch
- white five-petaled flowers appear alongside fruit almost continuously
Facts
- also called Jamaican cherry, strawberry tree, or aratiles — the "cotton candy" nickname is well earned
- a champion pioneer species: grows in poor soil, fruits fast, and feeds birds, bats, and passers-by year-round
- the seeds are so fine you eat the whole berry without noticing them
